


Gone

by Gigi_Sinclair



Category: Outlander (TV)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-20
Updated: 2015-05-20
Packaged: 2018-03-31 11:04:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 677
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3975709
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gigi_Sinclair/pseuds/Gigi_Sinclair
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nobody is that bad for no reason.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Gone

**Author's Note:**

> "All that was good, all that was fair, all that was me is gone."

Randall remembers their faces. Even now, after all this time, they haunt him the way he hopes he haunts Fraser, exerting the painful power of memory across an ever-widening expanse of years. He doesn't dwell on them. He has far more important matters to consider, but still, they are always there, hovering, actors in the wings waiting for their inevitable moment at centre stage. 

They were officers, which he supposes is some small mercy. One was young and more high-born than Randall. His plummy voice echoed in Randall's ringing ears after the man struck him, putting Randall in mind of the schoolroom. The second assailant was older, a contemporary of Randall's father. In the short time they had served together, Randall had even begun to see him as such, as a friendly figure far different to the cold man who'd sired him, bitter and jaded, ever present in the house but rarely seen by Randall or his siblings. This man _was_ different. He was much worse. 

Randall recalls the iron taste of blood on his tongue, and knows he will recall it to his dying day, whether or not that is the date Fraser's harpy wife claims it will be. He's tasted it since then, but that time was the strongest, the most repulsive. His spinning head, the gritty dirt beneath his hands as he fell to the ground, the icy chill of the air as the younger officer tore off his uniform, all of these are imprinted on Randall like iron brands, scorched into his mind. The pain of the act itself is a little duller, but the breathless degradation of it, the humiliation so strong it made him want to vomit, remains, as clear as if it were yesterday. As does the promise he made to himself, then and there, that he would never feel that way again. 

Afterward, they left him snivelling in a corner with a bloody nose and a bloody arse. He doesn't know how long he stayed there. It might have been minutes or hours, although logic favours the former. He can't remember the person who found him, not a single detail, not even whether it was a man or a woman.

He wonders, sometimes, if that says something about him, that his aggressors are remembered so vividly while the person who tried to offer solace is nothing, a void. Perhaps, he thinks, he might be a different man if it had been the other way about. Not too different. He is who he is, and in many ways has always been thus. But perhaps this experience solidified him, turned a still malleable lump of clay into a rock-solid, immovable statue. It doesn't matter. That night, he drew himself up, pulled his dishevelled hair into order, and swore at his would-be savior, chasing the person away. Then he wiped his eyes, wiped his nose and returned to camp. 

Two days later, the younger of Randall's attackers was dead, stabbed in his sleep by an enemy soldier nobody saw sneak into or out of the barracks. If anybody harboured an alternate theory as to the man's demise, they didn't express it. It was three months before the older man was gone, found strangled in the woods. Again, there were no suspects other than vague enemies, although by that time, the name “Black Jack” had already begun to circulate around Jonathan Randall, a formerly unremarkable young officer who had acquired a ruthless temper and a lack of compassion stunning even by the standards of the English army. So stunning, in fact, that Randall was soon promoted, the first step on a path that has led him to power, to glory, to everything he's ever wanted. 

Almost everything. Seeing Fraser—Jamie—lights something in Randall he hasn't felt for a long time. He knows what it is: weakness. And he reacts the way he always has. He becomes harder, crueler, “blacker” than ever. Because weakness leads to one thing, agony, and Randall knows exactly what that feels like.

He will never let himself forget.


End file.
